Founding Editor: Daya Varma (1929-2015)
Editors: Vinod Mubayi (New York) and Raza Mir (New Jersey).
Editorial Board: Ram Puniyani and Irfan Engineer (Mumbai); Pervez Hoodbhoy (Islamabad); Dolores Chew (Montreal); Vamsi Vakulabharanam (Amherst); Ajay Bhardwaj (Vancouver).
Circulation/website: Feroz Mehdi (On behalf of Alternatives, Montreal).
EDITORIAL: AS INDIA’S ELECTORAL LAMP CONTINUES TO DIM, THE US ONE SEEMS TO SHOW A FLICKER OF HOPE
Vinod Mubayi
The results of elections that confer both legitimacy and authority to the winners have become the most important determinants of politics in states that consider themselves electoral democracies. Other aspects of democratic functioning that were once regarded as fundamental, such as freedoms of speech, assembly, and the press along with rights guaranteed by the constitution, including the rights of ethnic and religious minorities and the political opposition, seem to have acquired a kind of second-class status in the operations of government as reflected in much of the popular media in countries like India, the world’s largest democracy, and the U.S., the world’s oldest democracy.
Read more…BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT
Three Essays Collective is proud to announce the launch of the international print & eBook edition of:
SPEAKING OF HISTORY: CONVERSATIONS ABOUT INDIA’S PAST AND PRESENT
by Romila Thapar & Namit Arora
Read more…NEW NEPAL MUST ALSO RISE FROM RURAL AREAS: A BLUEPRINT FOR CHANGE
Sapan News and Ramu Kharel
When youth across Kathmandu and Nepal’s major cities poured into the streets this past September against corruption and the silencing of their voices, it felt like a reckoning long in the making. But what does this revolution mean for the millions beyond the ring road, in the hills and plains of rural Nepal?
Read more…FORGING THE STEEL OF UNITY: LEFT POLITICS IN CONTEMPORARY PAKISTAN
Ammar Ali Jan
A defense of the Haqooq-e-Khalq Party’s anti-imperialist position that critiques sectarian and messianic tendencies on the Pakistani Left, and advances a dialectical, universalist strategy for socialist renewal in the country.
Read more…HOW CASTE PERVADES SOUTHASIAN LANGUAGES
Abhishek Avtans
CASTE AS A socio-cultural phenomenon is both pervasive and enduring across Southasia, shaping institutions, practices and everyday interactions. As caste is such an integral aspect of society in the Subcontinent, it is imperative to understand how it interacts with the multitude of languages spoken in the region. Sociolinguists speak of social dialects or sociolects, referring to non-regional variations in language shaped by factors such as occupation, place of residence, education, income, “new” versus “old” money, racial or ethnic category, cultural background, religion and so on. When these linguistic variations are determined by caste affiliation, they are often referred to as caste dialects, or castelects.
Read more…ONGOING SIR ENUMERATION PROCESS: DESIGNED TO EXCLUDE, SAYS PUCL
Sabrang India
In a multi-state report on the hasty and ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process being conducted by the ECI, the PUCL has, echoing what opposition parties and other civil rights groups been stating, called it ‘designed to excluide’
Read more…‘STALKED, DOXXED’: INTERNET TURNING INTO NIGHTMARE FOR DELHI WOMEN
Ashna Butani
Every time she looked at her incessantly buzzing phone, Nafisa (name changed), 23, a college student in Delhi, found either a graphic rape threat, an Islamophobic slur, or hundreds of missed calls from unknown numbers. It was before her examination in 2023 and since all her documents were linked to the same phone number, she could not do away with it. “They said they knew where I live. I even stopped going out to the balcony,” she recalled. Two years on, she added, “I don’t ever want to go back to Delhi.”
Read more…THE 2025 BIHAR ASSEMBLY ELECTION EXPLAINED
Ajachi Chakrabarti
Bihar’s eighteenth assembly election was held, on 6 and 11 November, under extraordinary circumstances. It was preceded by the Election Commission of India conducting a Special Intensive Revision of the state’s voter rolls—an exercise that the ECI is poised to conduct nationwide in the near future.
Read more…PRESS FREEDOM UNDER SIEGE: WHY THE INDIAN STATE IS AFRAID OF ‘KASHMIR TIMES’
Anuradha Bhasin
Editor’s Note: Founded in 1954 by veteran journalist Ved Bhasin, the Kashmir Times has long stood as a bulwark of journalism in the highly militarized and violence-ridden Jammu and Kashmir. Despite repeated targeting by different Indian governments, Kashmir Times has chronicled the region’s most challenging chapters with courage. In the wake of the November 2025 raid on its Jammu office — for alleged “anti-national” activities — the newspaper’s Managing Editor Anuradha Bhasin writes this piece in defence of her publication, and in defence of press freedom itself. As India slides to the bottom of the Press Freedom Index, The Polis Project’s editorial believes it is crucial to stand up for the fourth pillar of democracy and affirm that holding power accountable is the main purpose of journalism.
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